Call for Book Chapter Proposals:

CDER Book Project on Parallel and Distributed Computing Instruction in Undergraduate Curricula: Volume 3, Springer, 2025.

Submission deadline: November 30, 2024

Book Title:

Topics in Parallel and Distributed Computing: From Concepts to the Classroom

Motivation and Goals:

Basic undergraduate computing courses taught in most colleges are still based on the 20th century conceptual model of computation, predating the distribution of computing across the Internet and widespread use of parallel processing. Learning to reason about computational problem solving, without considering the powerful capabilities offered by parallelism and distribution, creates a foundational mindset that limits creative insights and handicaps students in furthering their education and potential productivity in their careers.

The Center for Parallel and Distributed Computing Curriculum Development and Educational Resources (CDER) initiated a book series to help overcome some of the key impediments that have prevented educators from updating introductory (and advanced) computing curricula to address the reality of current systems. The series provides instructional resources and guidelines to instructors as well as students to incorporate Parallel and Distributed Computing (PDC) topics in the undergraduate courses as part of the NSF/IEEE-TCPP Curriculum Initiative. The first two volumes were published in 2015 and 2018, respectively, and can be found at the CDER website.

CDER is now seeking proposals for chapters in Volume 3 of its book series on PDC instruction in undergraduate curricula, possibly also addressing modern aspects of AI, Big Data, and Cybersecurity.

Volume 3 will focus on how the early adopters of the NSF/IEEE-TCPP curriculum guidelines or ACM/IEEE 2013 and related curricula and the computing community at large have integrated PDC topics in specific courses in their local contexts. These are intended to provide instructors of specific modules or courses with material ready to be incorporated into their classes with advice on how to teach based on prior experiences. The chapters are expected to include how the PDC topics at hand were taught and how they were integrated into the current courses. Possible courses include early computing courses such as CS0, CS1, CS2, Discrete Math, Data structures and Algorithms, Systems/Computer Organization, and Digital Logic as well as upper level/advanced courses such as Networking, Operating Systems, Computer Architecture, Software Engineering, and Databases.

The published chapters are expected to be supplemented with ready-to-adopt instructional materials in an Appendix (full topic or even full course exemplars, slides, assignments, quizzes, online/video material, if any; a manual on how to teach alongside existing topics, etc.) which will be kept live on the CDER website for periodic updates by the authors. Authors are also expected to share teaching experience/evaluation in their local institutional context.

What and how to submit:

Please submit a 2-3 page informal proposal specifying your goals and a brief outline of your proposed chapter by November 30, 2024 via this EasyChair portal. Employ keywords specifying the core/advanced course that is the primary target of your chapter and the PDC topics covered. Multi-author teams are welcome.

The proposals will be reviewed by the CDER center investigators, and the authors will be notified by December 15, 2024. The chapter submissions will be due by Feb 28, 2025 and will be reviewed by the NSF/TCPP curriculum working groups and other experts. This volume will be published by Springer and preprints will be made available for free downloads at the CDER site (past chapters' download count is about 60K).

Resources:

NSF/IEEE-TCPP Curriculum Initiative on Parallel and Distributed Computing - Core Topics for Undergraduates: Version 2.0.

Editors:

Anshul Gupta, IBM Research, anshul@ibm.com

Sushil Prasad, UT San Antonio, sushil.prasad@utsa.edu

Alan Sussman, U. Maryland, asussman@umd.edu

Ramachandran Vaidyanathan, LSU, vaidy@lsu.edu

Charles Weems, UMass, weems@cs.umass.edu